Energy Pumping in Nonlinear Mechanical Oscillators: Part II—Resonance Capture

Abstract

We study energy pumping in an impulsively excited, two-degrees-of-freedom damped system with essential (nonlinearizable) nonlinearities by means of two analytical techniques. First, we transform the equations of motion using the action-angle variables of the underlying Hamiltonian system and bring them into the form where two-frequency averaging can be applied. We then show that energy pumping is due to resonance capture in the 1:1 resonance manifold of the system, and perform a perturbation analysis in an O(ε) neighborhood of this manifold in order to study the attracting region responsible for the resonance capture. The second method is based on the assumption of 1:1 internal resonance in the fast dynamics of the system, and utilizes complexification and averaging to develop analytical approximations to the nonlinear transient responses of the system in the energy pumping regime. The results compare favorably to numerical simulations. The practical implications of the energy pumping phenomenon are discussed.